Portal:Moving to another wiki farm
Moving to another wiki farm Moving to another wiki farm This page is for discussion about whether to move the Cannabis Wiki to another wiki farm. :See Category:Free MediaWiki wiki farms at WikiIndex. Top :See: Site problems, and features of an ideal wiki farm. While I agree that this would give us greater freedom over formatting, would another wiki farm bring with it more traffic? While highly restrictive, Wikia is friggin' huge with many readers. DragonMage 00:00, March 2, 2011 (UTC) :Traffic would divide up between the two cannabis wikis over time. Google is how most people come to websites nowadays. I have had various websites over the years. I have created mirror sites to spread the bandwidth load. The sites have stat counters that give the number of page views, unique visitors, popular pages, and how people come to the site. Google remains the main feeder into the sites and the mirrors. The traffic eventually divides between the mirrors. --Timeshifter 16:05, March 2, 2011 (UTC) ::Okay, I see what you mean now. You are talking about creating a mirror of Cannabis Wiki rather than completely moving the contents (and abandoning) this site. More exposure is good but how would you go about keeping the two sites 'in sync'? -- DragonMage 23:12, March 2, 2011 (UTC) :::It is not possible to move most Wikia wikis off of Wikia completely. Wikia will not allow it. Sometimes they will allow the deletion of wikis that are very small. One can only "fork" most Wikia wikis (copy them completely to another wiki farm). Or one can copy the parts of interest. Anyone can do it. See . There are other tools, too. See also the database dump here: . I think the 2 wikis would gradually go their own ways, and focus on different things. Many people edit on multiple wiki farms. --Timeshifter 16:07, March 3, 2011 (UTC) Expect Catastrophic loss of traffic Return to top. I have been a webmaster since '99 and will tell you this. Change the url, lose your rank and traffic. Google sets great store by existing links to a web site. Do you have a list of every web site that links to you and the resources to contact the admins in the hopes that they will cooperate and take the time and effort to modify your links, some of which may be in a forum that requires digging through a message base? For the video problems, I don't really know how serious that is, because I never watch videos here, but if I do want videos, on a rare occasion, I go to YouTube, which has plenty of weed-related content. I think videos may be more appropriate to YouTube or else forums that specialize in conglomerating videos of a specific topic (cannabis). It may seem old-fashioned, but ask yourself what is on NORML and MPP--videos or text articles? The majority of their content is text articles and it is for a reason, because people want to read, but if they want to view, they go to YouTube. The amount of videos congesting the landing page on this wikia is astonishing and may merit rethinking on the part of the admins. Google suggests a max load time of about 2 secs. My site's average page load time is 1.4 seconds. How many users do you think drop by only to leave in less than 5 seconds because they don't want to wait for the load? RTF problems may be more serious. I noticed a long time ago the RTF editor doesn't always work according to plan, so I usually use direct HTML edit to make additions, being very comfortable in HTML. And wiki's special coding isn't too difficult to use either. I'd be loathe to change an url after it has been in existence for a good while like this one has. One of my dreads is that one day we may lose control over our url due to the demise or disability of myself or my fellow admin or both. Url is the key to traffic. It ain't easy starting from scratch, wait and see. --Le Critique 18:48, March 20, 2011 (UTC) :I believe Wowpedia is approaching WoWwiki in number of weekly page views after forking from WoWwiki in October 2010. I need to check Alexa, Quantcast, etc.. See: :*Forum:Should WoWWiki leave Wikia? :I have noticed many videos on other cannabis-related sites. The main page does have a lot of stuff. But so do millions of blog home pages. So it is a format that is popular. As long as the reader does not have to wait for the whole page to load before seeing anything. I would like to stay on topic with this forum, and we can discuss the main page more elsewhere. :RTE has been shut off for this wiki at my request. I wish we had a button on the toolbar to go to RTE mode. I occasionally find a use for RTE in spite of its bugs. But currently on a Wikia wiki one either has RTE as the default, or plain wikitext as the default without the option of an RTE button. :I have wikis on 4 wiki farms. 2 of them do not have any pages other than a plain, nearly-empty main page. I am using them for experimentation. I experiment mainly on my user pages there. You can create user pages on any wiki farm. No need to create or join a wiki either. Just create a user page on the overall community wiki on a wiki farm. :I do not want to fork the Cannabis Wiki if at all possible. I like some of the features of other wiki farms. Such as the ability to create a private wiki where the founder of the wiki has final say on everything. The wiki itself can be made viewable by the public, or only registered users. Editing can be open to everyone or only registered users. Lots of choices. The wiki can also be deleted by the founder. There are a variety of wiki farms out there, and room for everybody. It only takes 5 minutes to start a wiki. Usually only an email address is required. And that does not have to be public. :If you have more than one admin on a wiki, then the problem of disinterest or disability of the founder or main admin will not necessarily cause too many problems with a wiki. That is one big advantage of wikis over regular websites. By the way, the Cannabis Wiki is looking for more admins. Do you want to be an admin? Ask here. --Timeshifter 09:59, March 21, 2011 (UTC) Traffic numbers for wikis Return to top. Currently, concerning the WoW (World of Warcraft) wikis, the Wikia wiki (wowwiki.com) has more traffic: *http://www.quantcast.com/wowwiki.com/traffic *http://www.quantcast.com/wowpedia.org/traffic As for the number of content pages the WoWpedia wiki has more: *http://www.wowwiki.com/Special:Statistics *http://www.wowpedia.org/Special:Statistics Here are the Cannabis Wiki numbers: *http://www.quantcast.com/cannabis.wikia.com/traffic *http://cannabis.wikia.com/Special:Statistics I believe forking the Cannabis Wiki might have similar results. It might be different if the 2 wikis diverge enough to create separate focuses, editor pools, audiences, etc.. It also might be different if a different wiki maintains the 2012 city lists for the Global Marijuana March (GMM). Currently, the Cannabis Wiki has a large focus on the Global Marijuana March, and gets a spike in traffic in April and May due to that focus. See the Cannabis Wiki Quantcast link above, and click on the 1-year tab. Another GMM wiki might be able to keep substantial traffic if it maintained the detailed city list for 2012 and coordinated with the GMM organizers. The GMM city list has been maintained on different websites over the years, and people soon link to the current city list. There are other wikis that concern cannabis. I may add their numbers and links here as I find them. Weeds Wiki: *Wikipedia: Weeds (TV series). *http://www.quantcast.com/weeds.wikia.com/traffic *http://weeds.wikia.com/Special:Statistics Other wikis concerning cannabis can get good traffic numbers depending on their focus. There is room for everybody. --Timeshifter 07:50, August 28, 2011 (UTC) Other wiki farms Return to top. :Note: See this detailed comparison of MediaWiki wikifarms. It explains how to move, lists skins offered, gives descriptions, and more. See Category:MediaWiki wiki farms at WikiIndex. --Timeshifter 06:42, April 20, 2011 (UTC) :Since most MediaWiki wiki farms use the CC-BY-SA license, then people can copy over as little or as much as they want. From a few pages to the whole wiki. See: :http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Community_Central:Licensing :http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 :http://cannabis.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Export :http://cannabis.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Statistics - see "Database dumps" section at the end. :More cannabis-related wikis is a good thing. I don't necessarily endorse copying the whole wiki though. But info is meant to be shared, and if you have a good use for it, then go for it. Integrate the info everywhere. --Timeshifter 06:24, April 28, 2011 (UTC) Semi-for-profit wiki farms Return to top. See: Wikipedia:Advertisements and the section about semi-for-profit Benefit Corporations. --Timeshifter 02:39, July 9, 2011 (UTC) Ads intruding into content space This can be a serious problem. See: Community: Forum: Wikia, I'm thoroughly disappointed. --Timeshifter 03:08, September 21, 2011 (UTC)